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in: Work, Swans, Nightmare Fuel, Nightmare Fuel (band)

Swans/Nightmare Fuel

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Notable examples of Nightmare Fuel in the music of Swans include the following:

  • Soundtracks For The Blind can only be described as damaging. Songs like the 15 minute "Helpless Child" can drive you to paranoid hallucinations.
    • More from Soundtracks for the Blind:
      • "Her Mouth Is Filled With Honey" combines incomprehensible layered vocals with a tape of Jarboe's father discussing seeing his daughter, unbeknownst to him, having her first LSD trip.
      • "Volcano", a slightly fractured dance tune from the perspective of a psychopath stalking and then cannibalizing a rock star.
      • The climax of "Animus", in which Michael Gira's wordless vocals are overwhelmed by a torrent of droning viola and pounding percussion, sounding not unlike a whiteout. In light of Gira's last actual words, this is terrifying.
      • "The Beautiful Days" contrasts a little girl's song with difficult-to-place synth noises and a woman describing working as a phone sex operator.
      • "I Was A Prisoner In Your Skull" consists of, at first, a massive dissonant orchestral swell, which subsides into electronic noises, random frantic drumming and finally slide whistles, over which a very bizarre monologue appears. "Testing, one, two, three..."
      • "I Love You This Much", a weird concatenation of hallucinatory samples and musical fragments including a pitch-shifted series of excerpts from a choral piece by György Ligeti. Yes, the Shining guy.
  • "Blind Love" from the Children Of God. Big, slow, thumping drums then a deep, cracked voice stirs, moans and begins to share some distinctly disturbing thoughts. Then huge clashing chords section off the verses. It sounds like the Frankenstein Monster formed a band.
  • If you're feeling bold, check out their reworking of "I Crawled" on their live album Swans Are Dead. The original version was already creepy enough, but the gradual buildup and Jarboe's tortured vocal performance (goes from seductive woman, to weeping little girl, to raging demon all in about ten minutes) is seriously chilling.
  • Anything on Greed or Holy Money.
    • Live, even more so. Go out and listen to the version of "Another You" from Public Castration Is A Good Idea and try to sleep. Or better yet, "Coward". Or "A Hanging".
  • Michael Gira's side project The Angels of Light had some doozies too, ranging from slow-burners like "New City in the Future," to the satanic street parade backing "Rose of Los Angeles," to the Swans-like mechanical stomp of "Black River Song."
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